


A Better Boyfriend for You

by Sherb42



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Feud is laughing at you Rimmer, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Season/Series 01, Rimmer has worse self-awareness than Cat sometimes, This whole thing is just the two of them talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 09:05:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16971735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherb42/pseuds/Sherb42
Summary: Rimmer gives some much-unwarranted dating advice to a freshly dumped Lister.





	A Better Boyfriend for You

Ever since Kochanski had dumped Lister, he had fallen into a deep slump. She had meant absolutely everything to him, and now she was gone. It didn’t matter that they had only been together for three short glorious weeks, he had been ready to live his whole life by her side and now she was gone. She wasn’t _really_ gone, no, she was still there having the time of her life being back with the great and wondrous Tim. Or Tom, or Theodore, who really cared what his name was anyways?

Lister had been in a bit of a rut all week. Drinking and smoking more than usual, getting out of bed less, he didn’t want to do anything fun anymore. All the fun things in his life he used to do with Kochanski, and he couldn’t force himself to try and do them without her. Drinking with his mates wasn’t any better either, that’s what he had done when he first met her. Besides, his friends either didn’t shut up about the two of them or wanted to do something stupid with their time. 

Rimmer was on the bunk below him revising a textbook that was composed more of sticky notes than an actual book, getting increasingly more annoyed with Lister’s moping as time went on. _I mean sure! Feel bad about bad things happening to you, but do you have to do it so loudly? Do you have to make such a big deal out of it? Just move on with your life, bucko!_ He hated being around a depressed Lister. It was like being around a normal Lister, but you actually had to be nice to him. 

Rimmer had enough of this, he had to do something. Lister needed a pep talk, a good morale-boosting speech to shake off this childish depression. He knew exactly what he had to do. 

“Lister, are you awake?” He asked the bed above him. Of course, he was awake, he could hear him. Lister had been fake-snoring this whole time. Lister’s fake snores sounded like normal human snoring – so it was very easy to tell when he was doing it. 

Lister pulled the blanket from his face, mourning eyes not wanting to adjust to the harsh light of the room. He groaned an acknowledgement. 

“You’re not still moping on about Kochanski, are you?” 

“Leave me alone, man.” Lister said witth a grown.

“This has gone on long enough, you need to get over her and move on with your life.”

“Easy for you to say, It’s not your life. She was going to be such a big part of mine.” 

“Let me guess, all part of that stupid Fiji plan, right?”

“Yeah, she was,” Lister said with old daydreams coming back to him in pleasant, sun-bleached waves. 

“Well, If everybody’s plans went as they wanted them too I'd be a captain of the entire Space Core by now. Circumstances change, you have to adapt to crushing blows when they hit you.” 

Rimmer’s words of encouragement didn’t seem to do much help. 

“Listen, I’m not going to be around you forever just to keep you sane, Milado.” Rimmer continued, getting increasingly more impatient. “One of your biggest problems is that you’re far too smegging romantic. All it takes is for somebody to smile at you a certain way and you’re ready to get down on one knee. It’s so childish.” 

“That’s not true,” Lister replied with an eye roll. Sure he was a bit of a sappy romantic type, but he wasn’t that easy to woo. 

“And your romantic abilities don’t exceed that of a schoolyard crush. You need to mature, be more sophisticated. Be something worth being in a relationship with.”

“Sure, Rimmer.” Lister replied, not really wanting to have this conversation. What the hell did Rimmer know about any of this stuff? Nothing. Nothing at all that’s what. If he did know about anything to do with romance, it wouldn’t be of any use for Lister. Rimmer’s idea of a great first date would be to sort vintage wires or something. 

“What you really need to do is find somebody that will help you become a better person, somebody that will fix all of your horrible habits and just make it better for the both of you.” 

Lister didn’t respond. 

“What you really need, would be a partner like, let’s say, me.” Rimmer said with the utmost confidence. Lister almost choked in surprise. 

_What._

Did he, did Rimmer just say that? Did he really just say he would be a good boyfriend to him? Lister fumbled around with his nest of blankets and peered over the side of the bunk beds, looking at the man below him. 

Admittedly, Lister had thought for a very brief moment in time that he had considered Rimmer as being sort of handsome, right up until the second that he had started talking. It was like pouring boiling hot cooking oil over a priceless Renaissance painting and watching it stain and burn. It wouldn’t ever be salvageable no matter what you tried. Lister had absolutely no idea Rimmer was even into men, and even if he was, he seemed to be so far into the closet that he would be a brothel owner down in Nadia. Even keeping that all in mind, Lister would be the absolute bottom of the list of the people that he would want to be in an intimate relationship with – Lister just frankly didn’t feel like he would be his type. But, it sort of made sense for Rimmer to propose it in a way to both bring himself up and put somebody better than him down at the same time. He would only ever admit something like that if he could use it to gloat profoundly or if he was too drunk to even compose himself. 

Rimmer just raised an eyebrow and kept on talking. “Someone who’s got the right stuff, and wouldn’t treat you like the temporary tot that Miss Kochanski has seemed to treat you like.” 

“She didn’t treat me like that,” Lister said defending her. 

“When you realise that you had just been used for those three weeks as a quick rebound and you’re back to your old self again, you need to go and do better for yourself, it’s what you deserve.” Their eyes met, a soft blush ran over both faces. “-Even if it is, well, you.” 

There was a quiet moment shared between the two of them. This was probably the nicest things that Rimmer had ever said to anybody in his life. It didn’t seem at all like him to care about self-care smeg, but why had he started to now? Rimmer had never seemed to care about Listers’, or anybody’s mental state before; it was nice. 

“I’m basically already doing all of this as it is, anyways. The only difference is that I would get something out of it.” 

“I thought ya hated me.” Lister asked quietly. All the bickering shared between the two of them, all the reports, all the shouting, the two of them seemed almost made for each other in a ‘if he hits you, he likes you’ sort of school-yard way. 

“You are a complete and utterly insufferable smeghead, but maybe deep down you could be an alright bloke.” Rimmer seemed to say reluctantly. He seemed to not want to say it out loud, but he did mean it. 

“Your parents would hate me.” 

“Well, they already hate me as it is. Frankly, something like this wouldn’t be big enough to change anything.” Rimmer wasn’t wrong about that. They did hate him. There was another pause between the two of them. Both half looking at each other and half looking everywhere but.

“Arnold, are you, asking to date me?” Lister finally said a bit sheepishly, just to know for sure that this was really happening. 

Rimmer snorted loudly at the very idea. “Absolutely not! Who do you think I am?” 

“But you were just-“

"What? No! Wrong! Absolutely brimming over with wrongability!" Rimmer said with a dismissive laugh. “Don’t be so daft Listy, I wouldn’t resort to that even if the whole universe was at stake and we were the last two humans alive. You’re hard enough to live and work with as it is.”

Lister rolled back onto his bunk with a blank expression on his face. Rimmer kept on going with listing out every single thing that Rimmer seemed to despise about him in typical Rimmer fashion, but Lister wasn’t listening anymore. Lister had started to zone back out as he processed Rimmer’s response. He knew that it was too good to be true. He looked up at the ceiling, feeling a little bit worse than how he did before his bunkmate had started talking. There was a crudely carved L + K right where his eyes fell that seemed to mock him more than Rimmer’s words ever could. 

It took Rimmer almost three hours to fully realise what he had actually said to Lister during that conversation. The day after he could be found with a bandage around his right hand after having to go to the medibay from almost ripping his fist clean in half when it happened. Decades later, seemingly out of nowhere, sometimes the memory of that night flutters back into Rimmer’s mind, giving him a punch to the stomach at the realisation that he, Freudian slip or not, had actually really asked to date him. 

And sometimes, when the same thing happens to Lister, he sometimes still wished that they did.


End file.
